News on the library front for scholars at Stanford working on French and Italian topics.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Recently Aquired Rare and Antiquarian Materials

Whether you plan to fall in love this summer, take a cruise, or imagine the Devil's take on Voltaire, you will find inspiration in Stanford's most recent acquisitions of rare and antiquarian materials. We have also added to our collection a work by Laura Bassi, many of whose family papers have now been digitized in a joint collaboration between the Stanford University Libraries and the Biblioteca Comunale dell'Archiginnasio, in Bologna, Italy.

A
welcome addition from the works of the distinguished physical scientist
of 18th-century Bologna, active participant in the Republic of Letters
and first woman to be appointed a professor in a European university.
Students and scholars interested in Bassi's extraordinary life will find
a magnificent archival resource, the Bassi-Veratti Collection,
available at the click of a mouse, thanks to a collaboration between
the Biblioteca Comunale dell'Archiginnasio in Bologna, Italy, and the
Stanford University Libraries.

A splendid edition of Gaspara Stampa's Rime. Born in Padua and resident in Venice, Stampa was certainly one of the most important female poets of the sixteenth century and embodied the Renaissance ideals of extraordinary learning and active participation in the cultural circles of her day. Originally published in 1554 not long after her death in the same year, the work was dedicated to the great lyric poet Giovanni della Casa, fellow resident of Venice and author of the most influential late Renaissance treatise on manners, Il Galatea.